The One-State Solution

A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock

Virginia Tilley

A piercing analysis of the Israel-PLO impasse and a sensitive proposal for a way out

Description

The One-State Solution demonstrates that Israeli settlements have already encroached on the occupied territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the extent that any Palestinian state in those areas is unviable. It reveals the irreversible impact of Israel’s settlement grid by summarizing its physical, demographic, financial, and political dimensions. Virginia Tilley explains why we should assume that this grid will not be withdrawn—or its expansion reversed—by reviewing the role of the key political actors: the Israeli government, the United States, the Arab states, and the European Union. Finally, the book addresses the daunting obstacles to a one-state solution—including major revision of the Zionist dream but also Palestinian and other regional resistance—and offers some ideas about how those obstacles might be addressed.

"A clear, trenchant book on a topic of enormous importance... Overall this is a courageous plunge into boiling waters. If it helps propel forward a debate that has hardly begun in this country it will have performed a signal scholarly and political function." —Tony Judt, New York University

". . . a pioneering text. . . . [A]s such it will take pride of place in a brewing debate." —Gary Sussman, Tel Aviv University

Virginia Tilley is Chief Research Specialist in the Democracy and Governance Division of the Human Research Council in Cape Town, South Africa.

Praise / Awards

"The words 'The One-State Solution' seem to strike dread, at the least, or terror, at the most, in any established, institutional, or mainstream discourse having to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. . . . It therefore takes great courage—and I use the word literally—to title explicitly a book under that infamous label. . . . Virginia Tilley is blessed with such courage and complements it with the requisite academic erudition. . . . Weaving her way through the historical progression of Zionism and through late 20th century and current international and Middle Eastern politics, she shows how the additional, pernicious state of settlement expansion (abetted by other massive human rights violations that go with the occupation) has brought us to the point where only a one-state solution can provide a just peace (and not just a state of conflict management going under the misnomer of peace)." —Anat Biletsky, Middle East Journal

". . . a brave book, for Tilley is keenly aware of the sensitivity of the issues she raises. But it is important that someone has at last pioneered a debate that has been stifled for too long precisely because of those sensitivities. . . . It is an important debate, courageously initiated." —Alastair Sparks, Star (South Africa)

"Tilley's work revives an old idea that has been ostracized but that offers a way out of the present deadlock of separation walls and a failed peace process. It succeeds in introducing the legitimacy of the one-state solution, specifically the secular democratic state, to the general public, particularly the American one. . . . The relation between the death of the two-state solution and the adoption of the one-state solution is far from being linear, even if it is morally necessary. It is important, though, to restart the discussion seriously without marginalizing it, and Tilley's work allows us to do so." —Journal of Palestine Studies

"[Tilley's] passion and commitment to justice are obvious and infectious. This thoughtful work will inspire activists to struggle for peace, and leave the reader with hope for the future, in spite of the present darkness." —Socialist Worker (Canada)

"...The One-State Solution comes as a much needed analysis in a rapidly evolving political scene." —Arab Studies Journal